If you live in nyc, as part of a Robert Bresson, the great French Director, retrospective, the Film Forum on West Houston is spooling his "The Devil Probably" in a new 35 mm print on Tuesday at 1010pm. I'm gonna be there and so should you.
I will tell you why I am writing about it on a music blog in a moment, for now let me share what the late great New York Times film critic Vincent Canby had to say about the movie: "Objects, people, places—everything is seen with a clarity so fine that his images achieve something beyond realism, as if clarity so intense could distort truth, at least as we have come to accept it… No other director I can think of has come as close as Bresson to molding his players into what are, in effect, variations on a continuing personality, much the way a painter might."
Sounds like a knock out, right? It was released in 1977 and while punk hadn't reached Bresson, this story of an 18 year old boy who commits suicide is just stunning. The question here is the boys sense of moral repugnance, as he says at one point: "I hate life. I hate death. My sickness is that I see things clearly," which is about as punk as a sentiment can get. Disenchanted youth, disillusioned youth, is the language of rock and roll.
I saw the movie once, maybe twenty years ago, at the Film Forum and the one moment I remember best occurs when some people are stuck in a bus in Paris and somebody shouts. "Who is responsible for this?" The reply is the movie title and an answer I've held close to me ever since I heard it.